Cough
by elenathehun
Summary: Bacta isn't a miracle cure. The slow decline of a legendary woman.


**In memory of Elizabeth Gebhardt, January 26, 1933 to March 11, 2005. May you rest in peace. Posted 12 Mar 05 on TF.N.**

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It's funny, really. She'd survived a childhood on the streets of Corellia and grown up in the turmoil of the Galactic Civil War and its' aftermath. She'd even survived six years running refugees and working as a fighter in Karrde's mercenary army during the scarheads' invasion. She'd fully expected, during any of those times, to die horribly in some battle-related death.

But instead, she's dying of a kriffin' disease.

She hadn't thought much of it at first. It was just a cough, after all, and it would go away soon enough. But it didn't go away, and after three months of listening to the sound of her breath rattle around in her chest, Ghitsa made her go to the doctor. The doctor poked and prodded at her and ultimately told her to take a vacation.

"Can you believe him? 'Take a break, he says.' 'Relax, he says.' I have _work_ to do and-"

Ghitsa gives her a sly look.

"Well,_ I_ could do with a vacation. Why don't you take sick leave and we'll go to Afaris and relax for a week or two?"

Fen yells about the job and responsibility and all the important parts of life, but it doesn't matter. Ghitsa cons her into it after a few days. After nearly forty years of working together, she knows which of Fen's buttons to push and when. To be fair, though, Fen knows the same of Ghitsa.

The vacation is _very_ nice, and Fen can see how Afaris got its' reputation as paradise. But two weeks of doing nothing don't improve her cough, and Ghitsa drags her to _another_ doctor, _"Just to check on it, you know"._

This new doctor pokes and prods just as the other had, but whatever he sees worries him. He takes X-rays and blood-tests and scans her with strange devices with even stranger acronyms. He sends her home, though, and tells her to make another appointment in a weeks' time.

A week later, Ghitsa drags her in again, and the doctor takes her aside, leaving Ghitsa in the receptionist's office. The look on his face is bad, and for the first time since she turned sixty, she feels afraid. She suddenly doesn't want to know what's wrong, and she's right, she doesn't.

The doctor tells her she is sick and she is dying and that there is no cure.

It's a lung disease, of all things. They call it pulmonary fibrosis, and they know what it does, but precious little else. Maybe it's an auto-immune disease, like rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe it's hereditary. Who knows? Sometimes it goes fast – you're diagnosed and wham, bam, slam, you're dead in a year. Other times it goes slow – little by little your chest become tighter and tighter, and your hands shake and your heart trembles. Bacta sprays will slow it, somewhat. Bacta isn't a miracle cure, though, no matter what the Thyferrans say about it.

They tell her that space flight will be dangerous, because she needs a lot of oxygen and space is rather famous for lacking it. It's this last thing that hurts her the most, because she's been flying since she was ten and giving it up seems even worse than dying.

But she stops flying anyway, because she doesn't want to die.

Shada transfers Ghitsa and her to Corellia. Two old women in a bar are natural magnets for gossip, and in this way they can still work for a living. After three months, though, she finds herself going blue in the lips for lack of oxygen. Despite the odds, despite the bacta sprays, despite hope, she finds that she's going fast.

Ghitsa buys her an portable oxygen rig, and they hook her up to it. It's just a little box, attached to her chest and hooked into her lungs, but with it she can _breathe_. Still, she feels her own mortality as never before. It's just plain _embarrassing_ to have to depend on a machine to breathe for her.

Still, she carries on, but she doesn't move much out of her bar chair.

After another six months, it's hard for her to move around. The tiniest little exertion causes her extreme weariness, and she finds that she just can't stop coughing. Her hands tremble all the time.

Shada moves Ghitsa and her to a house on Denon. She spends her days wraps in blankets checking data. Ghitsa goes out sometimes, but as the months pass, she stays closer and closer to home. Fen tells her not to looks so sithspawned weary and to cheer up. She smiles brightly and bustles off for food.

Ghitsa _never_ bustles.

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Eventually, she can't even work as an analyst. The medicines she takes stop the cough and help her breathe just a little better, but her hands shake for hours afterward. She can't even move.

The final straw was the accident. She couldn't feel her legs and was afraid she'd had a stroke. Ghitsa brought her to the hospital, and they told her that she wasn't getting enough oxygen to her extremities. They proscribed bed-rest and a full oxygen mask.

Shada puts them on indefinite sick leave and Ghitsa stops leaving the house. Fen weakens more and more, and the weaker she becomes, the more it hurts. She stays in bed mostly, and a hospice worker comes twice a week to check on her. And through it all, Ghitsa hovers, watching with a sad look in her eyes and a weary cast to her mobile mouth.

The last week of her life, Shada comes. Fen is embarrassed to Shada to see her in this state, looking so frail and delicate, like a wisp of wind could break her in half. She has a mask for liquid oxygen clamped over her face and she's lost a great deal of weight. But Shada just sits down next to Ghitsa and talks to her about mutual friends and deals gone bad and the latest bush war to crop up in the post-invasion galaxy.

Soon after Shada comes, (she is not sure when) her lucidity begins to leave her. She sleeps almost constantly now, and when she is awake, she doesn't always know what is going on. They inserted a catheter and a line of painkillers three days before, and it helps, some. It helps.

Throughout it all, Ghitsa and Shada wait. The last day, Ghitsa begins crying, and she won't stop. She only stops when Fen wakes up and _asks_ her to stop because she doesn't like it. Ghitsa holds it her tears and falls asleep the same time as Fen. Shada watches over them.

An hour after Fen went to sleep, her breathing begins to stutter and fail. Once, twice, three times she breathes in and out, and then…she doesn't breathe in again.

Shada waits five minutes, and then she wakes Ghitsa up.

And as Ghitsa cries, Shada D'ukal notifies her organization that Fenig Nabon is dead.


End file.
